We are thrilled to participate in the 2018 STEM for All Video Showcase this year, joining over 200 federally-funded STEM education research projects in a dynamic online exchange of ideas. The best part is, you’re invited! During the weeklong event, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and members of the public are invited to view the short videos, discuss them with the presenters online, and vote for their favorites. Starting today, we will be engaging with viewers all over the world who comment on our short video about our work. So, if you are curious about what we do and want to know more, head over to our page and ask us a question. Talk to you soon!

What We’ve Been Up To We’re at NCSM and NCTM this week! If you’re at the conferences in Washington, DC this week, come find us to learn more about our work. Presented at AERA. Last week, Dr. Confrey and Emily Toutkoushian presented on their validation work at the AERA annual meeting in New York City. Their presentation was part of a symposium on argument-based validation approaches in mathematics education. Learning trajectories paper among most-cited. A paper that Dr. Confrey co-authored with Dr. Gemma Mojica and Dr. P. Holt Wilson, “Learning trajectories in teacher education: Supporting teachers' understandings of students' mathematical thinking” was listed among the most-cited articles from the Journal of Mathematical Behavior. View the full list >> Resources for teaching percents are now available. We compiled a list of…

In October and November 2017, we conducted a design study on percents with our seventh-grade student and teacher partners at Highland Middle School in Harnett County, NC. Following the study, we analyzed the data we collected, which took the form of assessment results, student work, and classroom observations, to refine our learning trajectories on percent and improve the curriculum we developed. However, many of our findings were broadly applicable to teachers everywhere. General Instructional Suggestions With any curriculum, it can be very valuable to look through the materials as a grade-level team and think through the goals of the lessons. The “Thinking Through a Lesson Protocol” (Smith & Bill 2004; Hughes & Smith 2004) can be a valuable tool for this, but the important thing is to recognize the goals…

We developed a percent unit for last fall's design study with our partner school district in Harnett County, NC. We then revised the materials based on feedback from teachers and students, as well as analyses of the data we collected during the study. The unit first guides students to draw in prior knowledge in the Math-Mapper cluster Comparing Ratios and Solving for Missing Values in Proportions, before leading them through Finding Key Percent Relationships and Calculating with Percents. We would love to hear teachers’ feedback on how this unit worked in their classrooms! Comparing Ratios and Solving for Missing Values in Proportions (Preparation for Percents) Finding Key Percent Relationships Calculating with Percents

What We’ve Been Up To Visit to Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle. On January 11-12, Dr. Confrey was an invited guest at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, for a meeting on teachers' use of curriculum. The meeting focused on how curricular use and models of curriculum are changing in digital worlds and asked the question, "What can be done to support coherence in these situations?” Preparing for upcoming conferences. We’ve just returned from the AMTE Annual Conference in Houston, where Jere, Meetal, and Will presented on “Leveraging What Students Know: Improving Teacher Noticing Using Real-Time Feedback on Progress along Learning Trajectories”. Jere and Meetal also co-presented a joint session titled “Activities that Support the Statistical Education of Teachers”. Next, we will be in Greensboro with our partners…

What We've Been Up To Dr. Confrey presents at London Seminar. In December, Dr. Confrey traveled to London to give a talk called “Centering Instruction around Student Thinking and Doing,” at a seminar in honor of renowned math education researchers Dr. Celia Hoyles and Dr. Richard Noss. Review the slides here. New published work. SUDDS researchers Drs. Confrey and Gianopulos, in collaboration with Dr. Alan Maloney, had their paper, “Untangling the ‘Messy Middle’ in Learning Trajectories” published in the journal Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research and Perspectives. SUDDS abroad! December was full of international travel for the SUDDS team, with Graduate Research Assistant Meetal Shah traveling to Australia, Lead Software Engineer Yungjae Kim visiting family in South Korea, and Project Director Dr. Jere Confrey working with colleagues in England. International cruise liner at Sydney Harbor.…

What We’ve Been Up To Presentation at NC School/University Partnership Conference, Wilmington, NC. On October 21, Project/Outreach Coordinator Will McGowan and Graduate Research Assistants Meetal Shah and Mike Belcher presented with instructional coach Catherine Schwoebel and sixth-grade teacher Lissa Teston to describe our partnership with a nearby school. Attendees were excited about the mutual benefits of such partnerships. View the slides here. Presentations at NCCTM, Greensboro, NC. On November 3, Meetal Shah and Mike Belcher traveled to the NCCTM conference to give a presentation on using Math-MapperTM as a tool for student empowerment (slides here), as well as a workshop about our recent design study on ratio with our partner school (slides here). New study with a partner school. In October, our learning science team worked with three seventh-grade teachers…

What We’ve Been Up To Summer work with our partner schools. Teachers from our partner schools met with SUDDS team members to review revisions (or updates) to student and teacher reports, and discuss best practices for using the data. Item development work with teachers. This summer, we assembled a small team of teacher item writers from across the country to work with us on developing additional items for our assessment system. Look for these teacher-written items in our cluster tests and practice modules. Improving our diagnostic assessments. Our psychometrics team has been analyzing testing data to identify items for improvement and to increase the predictive capabilities of our assessments. Gearing up for the new school year. We welcome back our partners from last year, and are excited to have…